


just arrived (this is our best spot)

by dopaminekeeper



Category: ONF (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Changyoon-centric, Clone Sex (implied), Drug Use, Gen, Gun Violence, Heist, Multi, Selfcest, Time Travel, based entirely on the sukhumvit swimming MV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25887097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dopaminekeeper/pseuds/dopaminekeeper
Summary: changyoon leaves home for the first time, gets on the back of a stranger's tuk-tuk, finds himself on a heist team, and learns a LOT about what you can do with time-copies of yourself
Relationships: Lee Changyoon | E-Tion & Park Minkyun | MK, Lee Changyoon | E-Tion/Lee Changyoon | E-Tion, Mizuguchi Yuto | U/Park Minkyun | MK (implied)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	just arrived (this is our best spot)

**Author's Note:**

> i love three things in this whole world:  
> 1\. selfcest  
> 2\. space opera, and making up meaningless scifi jargon  
> 3\. changyoon's little princely shorts
> 
> please enjoy, [stream sukhumvit swimming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFSqmE-jy9g)

The three of them arrive at the Hideout a little bit bedraggled, with time dripping off their clothes and exposed hair. Changyoon comes out of it with the least dignity, space-sickness clear on his pale face. Jaeyoung slaps him on the back climbing out of the tuk-tuk — it’s sweet, if counterproductive.

“Ey!” comes a high-pitched voice, cutting through the thick air and bouncing off the sheets of scrap metal that form the uncanny graveyard that surrounds the Hideout. “Jaeyoung! My cargo’s late!”

“Your cargo was hard to find, asshole!”

 _I’m the cargo,_ Changyoon realizes a moment too late. This doesn’t seem to bother Seungjun any as he doesn’t even look up from wiping the time off his rifle with a cloth.

The guy with the voice that leaves the impression of citric acid on Changyoon’s tongue finally appears out of a rip in one of the metal sheets, the hologram knitting back up behind him to form the semblance of a perfectly smooth surface.

 _This has gotta be MK,_ Changyoon thinks, even though he only knows the guy by the tiny blinking letters on a screen. The mysterious MK that somehow convinced him to leave home for the first time… _ever!_ And get in the backseat of some stranger’s tuk-tuk, and—

“First things first!” MK announces, clapping his hands together, blowing greasy black hair out of his eyes. “I have one question for all of you, and if you don’t tell me the truth you’re going to screw up my whole situation.”

Jaeyoung groans like a kid given their least favorite chore. Seungjun finally looks up from polishing his gun.

“Have you ever,” MK asks, very seriously, “fucked a time-copy of yourself?”

 _“No?”_ Changyoon exclaims, eyes wide and darting from face to face.

Jaeyoung’s got a long-suffering expression on his face. “Not since the last time I was here.”

They all turn to look at Seungjun. He purses his lips, labret ring glinting in the neon moonlight.

“Define fucking,” he finally says. MK rolls his eyes.

“Got it, okay.” He gestures off to the sheet of scrap metal he’d materialized out of earlier. “Jaeyoung, you can take baby prince inside since you’re both clean.” Then, to Seungjun. “You, come with me.”

Changyoon splutters. MK’s face widens into a dimpled grin.

“Welcome to the Hideout.”

🛺🛺🛺

Apparently, what they need to do now is wait for Hyojin.

Changyoon doesn’t actually know who Hyojin is, or why he’s so important, or why Changyoon specifically needs to be here to wait for him, but MK is insistent on this point. They’ll wait as long as it takes for him to show up.

“Do you have, like, a rough estimate at least?” Seungjun asks, sprawled over the couch. MK looks at him like he’d requested that MK create a bespoke black hole in the middle of the living room, just for shits and giggles.

“It’s _Hyojin_ ,” MK says, eyes widening like that says it all. Seungjun snorts, like maybe it does, and Changyoon’s been left out of some inside joke.

“Excuse me,” Changyoon pipes up, halfway raising his hand as if someone’s going to call on him. “Can someone tell me who Hyojin is?”

Seungjun sits up, almost knocking over the stuff on the coffee table. “You’re kidding.”

Changyoon’s not kidding. He says so.

Seungjun lets out a low whistle. “You don’t get out much, do you?”

“No, he doesn’t, I think that’s the point of him,” MK cuts in, running fingers through his hair. His gaze glimmers with something magnetic as he catches Changyoon in the orbit of his grin.

“Hyojin’s the one who got us all into this operation.”

🛺🛺🛺

It takes a full day and a half for Changyoon to find out that Yuto exists. Turns out he’s been holed up in his room on some kind of bad trip.

MK tells the three of them that Yuto showed up about five weeks ago (by his rough estimation) and said that he’d gotten some kind of nebulous psychic message to be here. Something about needing six but he couldn’t really elaborate, and MK’d been dubious except he knew _juuuuust_ a little too much about the specifics of his grand scheme for comfort.

In any case, Changyoon comes out to the main area on the second morning in search of food (or really, in search of Jaeyoung or Seungjun to help him find food) and there’s someone unfamiliar wearing sunglasses indoors and drinking what looks to be a radioactive cocktail first thing in the morning.

“Mizuguchi Yuto,” he introduces himself, a little intimidating despite being at least a couple inches shorter than Changyoon. His handshake is firm.

“Oh,” Changyoon says, “uh, hi. You’re him.”

Yuto’s eyebrows quirk. Changyoon’s brain goes sideways for a long moment before righting itself.

“I just mean, MK told us you were around but I hadn’t seen you, I’m Changyoon, are you feeling better?”

Yuto’s smiling, just a little, so he counts that as a win.

🛺🛺🛺

“Is this gonna hurt?” Changyoon asks, eyeing the many-legged tower of screens and thick wires with a healthy dose of distrust.

“Probably not,” Minkyun replies, climbing a haphazard stack of crates and chairs to reach some interface or another. In the four days Changyoon’s been here, he’s learned that the “MK” who first messaged him is an alias (one among many that Minkyun employs, most of them feline-themed).

“What does ‘probably’ mean?” Changyoon demands, hopping up on a stool and looking around, wide-eyed. He’s not sure he believes that everything on these screens _actually_ means something, but Minkyun appears to make sense of the constant flow of data, fluttering here and there and around like some kind of bizarre insect.

“Probably means probably. It _shouldn’t_ hurt, but I’ve never done this before so. No guarantees!” His head pops up from behind a monitor, shooting the full force of his eye-scrunching smile directly at Changyoon.

Changyoon steels himself. He’s been trying a lot of new things these past few days! What’s one more?

He lets Minkyun steer him into a big cushy office chair, a smattering of holes in the leather allowing the foam underneath to poke through. Changyoon fiddles with the edge of a tear as Minkyun hooks him up to a couple electrodes, a weird sort-of scanner that sits next to his temple, and a monitor that clips onto his finger.

"Okay," Minkyun says, going to brush hair out of his eyes before he realizes that he has a bandana on today, "I'm going to fire it up. Tell me if anything feels weird."

Changyoon nods. Minkyun types something lightning-quick and inscrutable into a series of interfaces that sets beeping and chirping cascading around the room.

A faint buzzing starts up under Changyoon's skin. Strange, but kind of pleasant, and Minkyun doesn't seem alarmed so he stays still. The scanner goes green in his peripheral vision, making him squint one eye shut.

"Oh, what the _fuck,_ " breathes Minkyun.

"What?" Changyoon cranes to see what Minkyun's looking at, to no avail. Minkyun gestures impatiently for him to stay still.

"It's like…" Minkyun's tongue darts out quick to wet his lips. "It's like if the place you're supposed to be on the fourth dimensional plane isn't planar at all, it's… rosaceous."

"Is that bad?"

Minkyun's eyes glitter. "It means," he says, gaze glued to the screen, "that we have a _lot_ of tests to run, baby prince."

🛺🛺🛺

It takes Changyoon a week at the Hideout to finally ask Yuto — 

“Did he ask me whether I’d had sex with myself?”

Yuto says it almost like he’s bored, swirling one of his endless supply of neon cocktails in a glass. Changyoon flushes.

“Uh, yeah. That.”

“He asked when I got here.” Yuto’s watching him like he’s staring into his soul. Changyoon knows objectively that Yuto’s younger than him, but with a gaze like that, it’s hard to believe.

“And?”

Yuto raises an eyebrow. _“And?”_

Changyoon buries his face in his hands like a five-year-old, peeking out from between the vee of his fingers.

“Have you?”

Yuto has the audacity to laugh, knocking back the last of his drink — today’s is green, with a little pink umbrella sitting jauntily on the rim.

“I’m searching for utopia,” he says, tilting his head. “Can't count anything out.”

**🛺🛺🛺**

It takes two weeks for Changyoon to finally discover what’s in those neon cocktails, and he only finds out because Seungjun won’t let him off the couch until he tries a sip.

“Come on!” Seungjun laughs, cheeks flushed, perched on Changyoon’s thighs. “We’re all doing it, baby prince.”

“Stop calling me that!” Changyoon wiggles in protest but it just makes Seungjun laugh more, Minkyun’s high-pitched giggles floating over from where he’s sunk into his big squishy chair.

“You don’t have to,” Yuto says placatingly from his spot on the floor near Minkyun’s knees, looking at Changyoon from over his ever-present sunglasses. He looks up at Seungjun. “He doesn’t have to.”

“Back me up, Jaeyoung,” Seungjun whines, “we’re _all_ doing it.”

Jaeyoung blinks a few times, slow and disoriented, as if he just remembered that he’s in a room with other people.

“Uh,” he says, eyes darting warily between Changyoon and his captor, “yes. Yeah?”

“See?” Seungjun’s grin has a hint of madness in it — perhaps the effect of the technicolor liquid, which isn’t exactly encouraging. Changyoon gets the impression that no one’s going to back down on this point, so he steels himself.

“Fine,” he says, “let me up and I’ll do it.”

Yuto lets him take a sip out of his glass. It’s… surprisingly light, almost flavorless. Changyoon expected it to taste like melted candy or something cloyingly sweet but the only way he can describe it is _shimmery._ It leaves pears lingering on his tongue.

He takes a second sip, trying to chase the pear flavor, but Yuto stops him when he attempts a third.

“Let the first two settle,” he says, smiling slightly and prying the glass out of his hands to drain neatly in one gulp. Changyoon doesn’t think this seems fair at all, but he agrees, flopping down on the couch next to Seungjun.

Ten minutes later and Changyoon thinks he gets why Yuto’s always drinking this stuff. He feels _great —_ a little floaty, a little drifty. His fingertips feel like they’re full of bubbles, and he keeps pressing them together to feel them tingle _._

He might have also lost his already paper-thin brain-to-mouth filter.

“I think it’s unfair that I’m the only one here who hasn’t kissed himself,” he announces loudly, then covers his mouth with both hands as if that’ll suck the words right back in, his eyes wide as saucers.

Minkyun laughs, attention largely consumed by running his long fingers through Yuto’s hair.

“Baby prince is jealous,” he sing-songs, eyes squished up by his feline grin. Changyoon pouts.

“I’m not! I’m just…” He trails off, realizing there’s no ending to his sentence that doesn’t implicate him a hundred different ways. He draws his knees up to his chest, settling his chin atop them. “It’s not fair.”

“I believe in you!” Seungjun chirps, nudging Changyoon with his foot.

“Well, how did you manage it?” Changyoon demands before he can think better of it, Yuto’s neon concoction making him simultaneously more reckless and less bashful. Seungjun gets this thoughtful look on his face.

“Well,” he starts, “there was this solar collapse two sectors down, so the Ruins got an absolute tsunami of an aftershock.”

Jaeyoung lets out a low whistle.

“Long story short, for a month after I kept seeing someone walking my shift about ten minutes ahead of me, but no matter what I did or how I changed my own schedule, I couldn’t catch up. I was about ready to rip my hair out. So, I finally—”

“Hit the shower?”

“Hit the sho— _hey._ ”

“Sorry!” Minkyun grins, not at all abashed. Yuto half-heartedly smacks Minkyun’s knee.

“So I hit the shower, right? Was absolutely _sick_ but I managed to time it close enough that I caught him. Me. Clearly I’d been displaced during the wave on a fixed time axis, so I pulled him into the pocket long enough to neutralize the both of us, but we had some time to kill, so…”

“So?” Changyoon leans forward despite himself. The bubbles in his veins travel up to his cheeks, making them prickle with heat.

Seungjun laughs. “Well, what was I supposed to do, play cards with him? I’m hot, he’s hot, it was just blowing off some steam before one of us disappeared.”

Changyoon bites his lip.

“Y’know, I pulled an alt-self once,” Jaeyoung cuts in, quarter-full glass of electric purple liquid sloshing as he leans forward. A chorus of impressed _ooh’s_ bubbles up around the circle of couches and chairs. Changyoon’s not sure why they’re _ooh_ -ing, but he does it anyway so as not to accidentally insult Jaeyoung.

“I had just made a drop-off, heading back into the slipstream when, _bam!”_ He punctuates by slapping the coffee table, making the empty glasses and mugs rattle. “Guy who looks just like me is in the backseat, dressed like a weirdo and holding a _cake_. Said his name was Wyatt and that I was gonna take him to Alpha Achelois _or else._ ”

Changyoon’s mouth hangs open in a little O. “Or else _what?_ ” he asks in a hushed tone.

Jaeyoung shrugs. “Not sure, he didn’t say, but it didn’t seem like something I should really question. Just took him straight there, and then before he left we, uh. Yeah.” He purses his lips. “I’m usually pretty weirded out by all that stuff but… he was kinda hot.”

“I think _my_ evil self would be hot,” Minkyun sighs. Yuto snorts into his drink — Changyoon didn’t even see him going to make a new one, but he’s holding an almost-full glass of something cherry-red and gently glowing. Minkyun frowns down at him. “What?”

“I mean,” Yuto says, looking by all rights completely serious, “do you really think you’re the _good_ version?”

Yuto barely manages to put down his drink before he’s being tackled, laughing so hard his sunglasses slip off his face and skitter across the floor.

Changyoon ends up falling asleep on Jaeyoung’s shoulder, conversation buzzing around him and Yuto’s weird drink still sparkling in his fingertips.

**🛺🛺🛺**

“So do you always live here?” Changyoon asks, by now used to the strange constant buzzing under his skin that Minkyun’s tests cause. It’s been a month waiting for Hyojin, and over that month Changyoon’s spent a lot of time sitting in this office chair listening to Minkyun mutter about _curves that shouldn’t work_ or _holy shit, how are you even alive?_

“Here, like, in this star sector? This side of the slipstream?” Minkyun’s esses come out sibilant through his grin. “Or, you mean here, like, the Hideout.”

“Yeah.” Changyoon squirms when one of the electrodes near his ankle gives an ominous spark.

“Most of the time. Sometimes I head out when there’s another me incoming.” Minkyun types something lightning quick on a brightly lit oscillating keyboard. “I mean, I can only assume that a different me is taking care of anything I need to get done somewhere else, right?”

That doesn’t sound like an assumption _anyone_ should make, but Changyoon keeps this thought to himself.

“Is that how you ended up… y’know…”

“Boning down with myself?” Minkyun hits a key with a loud clack. “Bingo. Why, you wanna know all the torrid details?” He wiggles his eyebrows at Changyoon, just ridiculous enough to make him laugh as much as it makes him blush.

“Gross,” he giggles, drawing his knees up to his chest, a habit he has yet to break.

“It really wasn’t that big a deal,” Minkyun continues, as if Changyoon hadn’t said anything. “I hadn’t seen anyone in _months,_ and here comes me, out of the slipstream, crash-landing a stolen tuk-tuk out in the junkyard. Adrenaline was high, things got heated.” Minkyun shrugs. “Y’know, no one knows you better than yourself, and let me tell you —”

“Okay, okay!” Changyoon claps his hands over his ears. Minkyun laughs at him, not unkindly, but it makes Changyoon feel small and inexperienced. He pouts, cheeks red as apples, burying his face in his knees.

Minkyun works in relative quiet for a few minutes, humming some unidentifiable tune while the monitors buzz in a strange, soothing countermelody. Changyoon finds himself lulled by it, eyes half-shut by the time Minkyun ceases tapping away at his keyboard and sits back in his chair with a sigh.

“You’re a real mystery, you know that?” he says, looking Changyoon up and down. “Never seen patterns like yours.”

Changyoon swallows, looking down at his clasped hands. “Is that… should I be worried? About that.”

Minkyun stands, slings his arm around Changyoon’s shoulder so his head is pressing into Minkyun’s stomach. It’s an objectively terrible hug, a little awkward and so _Minkyun_ that Changyoon can’t help but giggle a bit.

“Nah, nothing to worry about. We’ll figure it out when Hyojin gets here.”

**🛺🛺🛺**

Changyoon doesn’t dream too often. He doesn’t know if it’s a symptom of where he comes from, or just a him thing, but it’s rare that his dreams are more than a series of impressions or emotions.

Tonight, though, he dreams in vivid technicolor.

He dives deep into a pool of water, lit from all sides by neon and moonlight, warm and forgiving and easy. In another world, he’d feel pressure and pain in his chest, but here, there’s no need for breath.

He swims, the faint echoes of melody filtering in through the water.

The mirror he comes upon is vast, so vast that he doesn’t know if it’s a mirror or another ocean and he’s reached the seam where these two oceans meet. He kicks his feet to approach, pressing his hand against the surface. It’s cool to the touch, delightfully so, and he presses his cheek against it.

Pulling back, Changyoon examines his reflection. Same as it ever is, but lit like this, blue and pink and green, soft angles and curves, dark hair flowing like seaweed… he wonders.

He reaches out again, presses his lips to the mirror to meet his reflection’s lips. He pulls back, catches his reflection’s gaze.

His reflection smiles, beckons him closer, draws him in. There’s a pane of seaglass between their lips until there isn’t.

When he wakes up, his mouth tingles with phantom warmth.

**🛺🛺🛺**

For a month, the constant refrain has been, “we’ll figure it out when Hyojin gets here,” and, “wait until Hyojin can look at that,” and, “Hyojin will let us know what to do.”

Changyoon is starting to think that this Hyojin guy can’t possibly be all he’s cracked up to be.

Hyojin arrives at the Hideout exactly thirty-seven days after Changyoon and Jaeyoung and Seungjun. He crashes in on a flaming motorcycle, the portal crackling and unstable behind him as he shoots once, twice, into the quickly-collapsing rip in space before it’s gone in a burst of sparks and time-droplets. His cycle drifts across the ground to the edge of the junkyard, leaving flaming scorch-marks in its wake.

Needless to say, Changyoon’s just a little bit starstruck. No one told him Hyojin was _hot._

Hyojin holsters his revolver, removes his hat to reveal a bright shock of hair.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says, lips pressed into a sharp line. “Ran into some problems along the way.”

“Yeah, no _shit!”_ Jaeyoung exclaims, gesturing at the scattered bullet casings, the smoking black smears of burnt rubber. “Your _problems_ had better not be on their way here!”

“I took care of it.” Hyojin starts walking up the path into the Hideout at a brisk pace, exuding confidence like this is his home and the rest of them are simply guests. Changyoon’s never seen anything like it.

Hyojin immediately sweeps everything off the kitchen table, tossing a tiny cube onto the surface which folds out into a complex series of gently glowing schematics.

“This is why I took so long,” he says, folding his arms over his chest, a smug smile tilting one corner of his lips.

Seungjun whistles. “You weren’t kidding, then.”

“Nope.” Hyojin pops the ‘p’, looking between each of them gathered around the table.

“These are up to date?” Yuto asks, taking a step around the table to look at the schematic from another angle. He looks more focused and lucid than Changyoon’s seen him all month.

Hyojin shrugs one shoulder, smirk falling to irritation at being questioned. “Far as I know, yeah. Unless the head of security themself was carrying around outdated plans.”

Seungjun cuts in, “We should take some time, double check —”

“Just trust me, okay?”

“Or don’t. I’d recommend don’t.”

Changyoon whips around. In the doorway, looking a bit worse for wear but still with that unsettlingly cold confidence, is another Hyojin. He’s got his revolver pointed directly at the first Hyojin’s head.

The first Hyojin grins, slowly raising his hands level with his head.

“Ah, is the party over?” he says, eyes sparkling and dangerous.

The newcomer seems unamused, stepping further into the Hideout. His hand doesn’t shake at all, wrapped around the handle of the gun.

“This heist is mine,” new-Hyojin says slowly, “this team is mine, and those plans are mine.”

No one else is willing to move lest something go horribly wrong, watching with bated breath. Changyoon clutches the edge of the table to stop his knees from giving out.

“Aren’t we splitting hairs now?” old-Hyojin replies, matching his counterpart’s steps so they’re circling each other in the living room. “What were you saying last night — ‘what’s mine is yours, baby’.”

Changyoon holds back a gasp. He can’t help but picture it in little flashes, and then immediately feels guilty — he met this guy _ten minutes ago!_

New-Hyojin takes it in stride, gaze never faltering and hand never shaking.

“Come into the pocket with me willingly or unwillingly,” he says, “your choice.”

The next few moments go so fast that Changyoon could barely say what happened. Old-Hyojin looks contemplative for a split second, like he might even consider going quietly. Then, he goes lightning-quick for his own revolver, and new-Hyojin shoots.

There’s no blood, no body. It’s like the room shifts two inches to the left, like Changyoon’s brain shakes and rolls and then suddenly there was never a second Hyojin, just this one holding a smoking revolver and darting his tongue out to catch a stray drop of time that landed on his upper lip from the blast.

“Alright folks,” he says, as if all the furniture in the living room isn’t absolutely covered in the stuff, “where were we?”

Planning goes smoothly from there. It seems relatively apparent why each of them has been brought here, hand-picked for the heist of a lifetime, one that the universe won’t ever forget.

Changyoon finally asks the question that no one seems to want to ask.

“So why am I here?”

Hyojin grins.

“You’re _rosaceous_ ,” he says, as if it’s the simplest and most obvious thing in the world. “The rest of us, we’ll destroy ourselves, but you?” He points to a room near the center of the schematic, gently glowing with power. “You’re the only one who can touch it.” His grin turns near-manic. “You’re gonna take it for us.”

“M-me?” Changyoon stutters out. “But I can’t— I don’t—”

Jaeyoung claps him on the shoulder, while Seungjun shoots him a toothy smile.

“Just follow our lead,” Hyojin says. “All you have to do is reach out and _take it.”_

**Author's Note:**

> the other title option was "waiting for hyojin" a la waiting for godot, but that was stupid
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/dopaminekeeper)


End file.
